


The Great Zoo Heist

by WynterRobin



Category: Batman (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Humor, I need to stop being so lazy with tags, and hides them in the batcave, basically Damian steals all the animals from a zoo, batfamily, you can guess the rest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-25
Updated: 2017-11-25
Packaged: 2019-02-06 19:52:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12824865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WynterRobin/pseuds/WynterRobin
Summary: “Dami. I understand where you’re coming from, I do. But don’t you think this,” he gestured to the room around them, “is a bit extreme?” Damian stared back up at him impassively, and it was clear when he did that just how much he really took after his father. “No,”Dick moaned in exasperation, tugging at his hair. “What are we going to do with all these animals?”Or, where Damian sneaks into Gotham Zoo and frees all the animals.





	The Great Zoo Heist

**Author's Note:**

> Because I’ve gotten a lot of feedback about this: Damian is a 10 year old child in this story. 10 year old children do not always make good or well informed decisions, nor do adult characters. Both good and bad situations can and should be depicted in fiction, they are not a how-to guide for real life. That said, please enjoy this story for what it is - a work of fiction, intended to (hopefully) make you laugh. And as always, thanks for reading!

When Dick got a call just after four in the morning, he knew something was wrong. It was a pretty fair assumption in his line of work, and one that was proven to be entirely correct when he picked up and heard Bruce’s strained voice on the other end. 

Dick had been asleep for less than two hours at this point, and he was completely wrecked when he sat up in bed to answer the phone, sheets pooling around his waist. “ ‘lo? Bruce?” He muffled a yawn against his hand, blinking the sleep from his eyes and squinting at the time displayed on the digital clock by his bed. “Dick. There’s been a situation,”  
It probably wouldn’t be noticeable to anybody else, but Dick knew Bruce better than almost anyone, and had enough experience trying to read the stoic bastard that when he was stressed Dick could pick up on it in his voice. And right now Bruce was very, very stressed out. 

That finally woke him up a bit. He was suddenly alert, clutching the sheets in a death grip with his free hand when he replied, rushing the words lowly, “What happened? I can be there in about fifteen, I just need to change back-” “Dick,” Bruce cut him off. Dick took a deep breath, forcing himself to relax. “Everyone is okay. It’s more of a.. domestic problem,” 

Dick was just plain confused now. “Domestic.. problem?” Bruce sighed. “Can you come over? Your expertise in this area would be appreciated,” “Ooookay?” Bruce grunted his acknowledgment before hanging up, leaving Dick to sit there in the dark, clutching the dead phone to his ear and trying to figure out what the hell a ‘Domestic problem’ entailed when applied to their family. He wasn’t entirely keen on finding out. 

He eventually decided against wearing the Nightwing suit, after spending a while deliberating over whether or not ‘domestic’ cancelled out the usually vigilante related ‘four in the morning’ situation. He figured that since Bruce wanted him at the house, throwing it in a duffel bag to bring with him would probably suffice. It was pretty grimy from his patrol earlier that night anyway, so if he could avoid getting back into it before getting to wash it then he would. 

In conjunction with his civilian clothing, Dick parked up in front of the manor instead of using the entrance to the cave. He was met at the door by a tired looking Alfred. The butler had a smile for him anyway, and it worried him more than it should have that Alfred seemed relieved to see him. “Master Dick, welcome home. Master Bruce is waiting for you in the batcave,”

“Thanks Al,” Dick shifted the weight of the duffel bag on his shoulder, still sore from earlier. He hoped that whatever was going on wasn’t going to require a whole lot of lifting, because that would suck. “Want to tell me what’s going on? Bruce wasn’t exactly open about the details on the phone,” 

Alfred quirked a smile. “As is the usual with Master Bruce I’m afraid. Master Damian has decided to take a stand against animal cruelty, and it’s resulted in us acquiring quite a few.. pets. It’s probably best that you see for youself,” 

Dick groaned, nodding reluctantly before heading for the concealed staircase. Of course Bruce would call him in for something that Damian had done. The year that Bruce had been away had sealed his fate as a stand-in parent for the youngest Robin, and as much as he loved Dami, he was a handful at the best of times. He could only guess at what horrors awaited him in the cave. The memory of acquiring Goliath was enough to send a shiver down his back as he descended down the enteyway to the batcave. 

_______________________________

“Dami. I understand where you’re coming from, I do. But don’t you think _this_ ,” he gestured to the room around them, “is a bit extreme?” Damian stared back up at him impassively, and it was clear when he did that just how much he really took after his father. “No,”  
Dick moaned in exasperation, tugging at his hair. “What are we going to do with all these animals?” 

The cave was full of them, all kinda of exotic animals, ranging from tiny brown scaled lizards to baby elephants, of which were currently taking a bath in the pool created by the waterfall. Even as he was talking, a penguin waddled past his feet, and he had spotted a monkey of some sort on Bruce’s desk curiously investigating Batman’s tech setup. 

“Tt. We have to set them free,” Damian stated, sounding annoyed, like it was the most obvious answer in the world. From the corner of his eye Dick could see Bruce watching him, waiting to see what solution the boy wonder would come up with for their latest Damian oriented crisis. 

Dick tried to keep a level head, taking deep breaths in through his nose. “Damian. Where are we going to set them free? We’re in Gotham. Somebody is going to notice us smuggling elephants out of the city. Not to mention that the zoo is probably going to want an explanation as to where their missing animals are,” Damian didn’t even miss a beat. “We can use trucks. Wayne Enterprises moves stuff across the border all the time. Once we get them to a nature reserve Batman can tell the GPD where they are,” The insistence in the younger boy’s voice thawed Dick’s heart a little. He knew how much Damian cared for these animals. Even if he was showing it in a kind of crazy way; that was just how Damian worked. And what he said wasn’t completely implausible.. 

Dick sighed, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. God he was too tired for this right now. He turned to glare at Bruce accusingly. “I thought you said this would be my area of expertise. This, this is not it,” he huffed, folding his arms over his chest. Bruce arched an eyebrow, was just opening his mouth to argue when Tim popped out from behind some crates, nearly giving him a heart attack. “You used to live in a circus right?” Dick nodded numbly, belatedly noticing the large cat Tim held craddled in his arms. At least, he hoped it was a cat, as opposed to a tiger cub or something like it. Tim nodded to himself. “Then you have more experience with exotic animals than we have. Someone’s got to take care of them until we can get them moved,” 

Dick glanced at Damian, who shrugged. “I’ve never owned an elephant before Grayson. I wouldn’t know what to feed it,” Another glance at Bruce revealed that he was subtly backing towards the exit, tablet in hand and typing rapidly on the screen. That was the point where Dick resigned himself to not getting anymore sleep that night. 

_____________________________

The news headlines the next day were pandemonium, but not even nearly so much as the batcave was. Jason and Stephanie had shown up sometime during the morning and afternoon respectively, and were now both playing with various animals and simultaneously being absolutely no help at all. Tim ended up trading off what was in fact a tiger cub to Jason, in favour of having his own personal troupe of penguins. He had managed to quarantine them to the pool and had spent the day perched at the edge, throwing them fish and taking videos of them on his camcorder. Stephanie was helping Dick with the elephants, which turned out to be much younger than he had previously thought and needed a lot of attention. He was trying to balance that with keeping an eye on Damian (who was trying to smuggle the smaller animals up to his room) and helping Bruce to figure out what the heck they were going to do to fix this mess. 

Eventually they settled on a variation of Damian’s plan, having ruled out the possibility of returning them under the cover of night when Damian had glared at them in betrayal and sworn that if they were going to the zoo then he was going with them. And despite Jason’s protests that that was where the kid belonged, they decided that it was a crisis worth avoiding. Damian was as stubborn as his old man, if not even more so. 

That was how they ended up borrowing several moving trucks and a cargo plane from W.E (under the pretence of relocating Bruce’s extensive car collection) and sneaking several dozen exotic animals out of gotham. Dick was in charge of making sure the animal’s holdings were suitable, and that they were well cared for during the journey. By some fluke of luck (although having Batman in charge definetely helped) they managed to pull it off. Even including his circus days and his time as Robin, it was the weirdest road trip Dick had ever been on in his life. 

Batman dropped the files on Commissioner Gordon’s desk several days later, much to his own discomfort. This wasn’t really his usual area of crime. It took another week before anyone discovered Damian’s new pet lizard Mushu (Dick had forced all of the Disney movies upon him), and only then because he crawled over Tim’s foot during breakfast. Tim would never admit to screaming when he felt it, ever. Dick was just happy to go home and get some actual sleep. He had learned a lesson from all this. Next time Bruce called, he was getting an explanation out of him before he went rushing to his aid. And if it involved any more zoo heists, then the Batman was on his own. Dick had had enough of that for this lifetime.


End file.
